Huston Smith: The World’s Religions – “Judaism”

Judaism, Christianity, and Islam all strongly first described themselves by way of comparison with neighboring religions. How does Smith strongly distinguish Judaism from the ancient Near-eastern religions that then surrounded it?

Smith draws an interesting strong contrast between the Judaic assessment of Creation and the Buddhist ultimate assessment of the worth of the world. What does he have in mind about Judaism, and about Buddhism? Can Hinduism be painted with that brush also?

On page 282, Smith offers an assessment of the Judaic understanding of the condition of Humanity that does not fall short of encomium. What is it about the Judaic take on human life that is supposed to justify such high praise?

Importantly, Smith claims that Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are each “historical” religions, in a way that Hinduism and Buddhism are not. What does he have in mind by “historical” and why is this important?

One idea of Judaism that regularly draws fire is the idea of a “chosen people”. Why is that such a hot-button? Smith is anxious to interpret that idea in a way that defuses it? How does he try to do that, and how successful would you say he is?

Very often Christians will read backwards from Christianity to Judaism, and when they do that they usually light onto the idea of “messiah”. How close is the Judaic idea of Messiah, would you say, to the idea as it later is used by Christians. If there is more than one idea of ‘messiah’ or ‘messianic ideal’ around, how are they distinguished from one another?

For Smith, what is “the prophetic principle” and why is it important for understanding the historical significance of Judaism?

This week the class will turn its attention the the great monotheistic religious traditions of the West. Also we will continue pushing through the Harris book, examining his chapter on “The Nature of Belief”. Finally, in keeping with our gradual progress through A Short History of Myth, we will read Armstrong’s chapter on “The Early Civilizations.” This chapter is brief, as all her chapters are, but extremely important in providing a bit of historical contextualization for the emergence of the Abrahamic tradition. The early Hebrew tradition defined itself so strongly against its surrounding competitors, that it is useful to have at least some understanding of how those competing religions imagined the world and the gods.

Interestingly, as a matter of history, students will often experience more difficulty understanding Smith’s discussion of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, than they will have in understanding his discussion of the Eastern Tradition. Almost always the explanation for this is fairly simple: since most students were raised in one of the faith communities of the Abrahamic tradition, they will already have a version of that faith community’s self-description available, as well as that faith community’s characteristic description of its neighbors. Since the academic, scholarly, and scientific study of religion – the sort of thing the course is concerned with – absolutely does not operate by deploying the self-descriptions of the various faith communities in the way they do themselves, what students will find is that the descriptions from Smith, from Harris, from Pals, and from Spear, will be at some variance from what they have been used to hearing and saying. That produces a sort of conundrum. Do they reject their faith community’s self-description out of hand? Do they refuse to entertain the new descriptions outright? Or do they temporarily bracket the former in favor of the latter? Obviously the course is designed for the last of these to be the best strategy. Later – and not as part of the activity of the course itself – you will have the leisure, as a matter of personal understanding and growth, to put those competing descriptions into relation with one another and decide what you believe and don’t, how you will live your life or won’t. But that is not what the course is up to at all. That is what you will be up to in your life – to say the least, a very different matter.

Houston Smith (The World’s Religions)

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One of the people who try to diffuse this of the “chosen people” is Houston Smith. According to Smith been chosen in Judaism is different because God made the chosen people  suffer on behalf of the other human kind contrary to what most people believe would be the outcome of been the chosen people. The people do not receive any privileges…

(373 Words)